We should resurrect the 1940s plans for a Grand Contour Canal - a 100ft-wide waterway that would have followed the 300ft contour line around England from Newcastle to London to Southampton and many places in-between - and then we could all travel more pleasurably, writes PAUL MILESmore...

Sajid Javid's decision to allow shale gas wells to go ahead in Lancashire marks a new phase in the industry's development, writes Michael Bradshaw. But it will also trigger a new phase of organisation, protest and resistance among impacted communities. Cuadrilla, IGas and other companies may just find the 'social licence' they thought they didn't need is essential, after all.more...

Britain's countryside must be protected from a host of threats, says Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate and President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Lose our countryside and we all lose a piece of our soul.more...

New research shows that European forests are 'peaking' in terms of their ability to absorb carbon dioxide. If this is true, writes Alan Simson, it's time to embrace some novel landscape-scale solutions ...more...

Planning - a dull subject that has a direct impact on some of the most important areas of our lives. One proposal to speed up planning has just been scrapped by the new Government. What will replace it, asks Bibi Van Der Zeemore...

International aviation is the UK’s fastest-growing source of carbon emissions, and yet the government isn't even accounting for them. Peter Lockley explains why we urgently need to call a halt to airport expansionmore...

When do Friends of the Earth and the Campaign to Protect Rural England want to build an incinerator? When they’re part of a new protest coalition called ‘Planning Disaster’ which yesterday filed a planning application to build an incinerator on the site of St Paul’s Cathedral in central London.more...

Leading environmental campaigner and author George Monbiot has said that he believes land-based wind farms in the UK 'have reached saturation point', and that any future farms should be built at sea.more...

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